Year: 2019

Growing up, my mother used to tell me, “when you have kids, you’ll understand.” I didn’t like that answer. I still don’t. But I think I do understand more even though I don’t have kids. It’s feels really hard sometimes. Living this monastic life. Trying to build something new within a great deal of uncertainty…

One of my favorite activities at the monastery is washing dishes. I love washing dishes because it’s repetitive, it’s mostly physical, and the end point is obvious. These traits are the opposite of my office work where it’s often unclear when the work is done, mostly mental, and novel situations. Because mental, office and creative…

Before, I wrote about my experiment going a month without fiction books. It went very well. I found my attention moved towards reading more non-fiction instead. While I enjoyed reading new things, I still felt like the non-fiction was more of a distraction than a positive. So, I decided to go one step further by…

I’m focusing on organization both physically and digitally. This means making a beautiful and effective work space. The tiny moments of frustration searching for lost cables and having a cluttered desk adds friction towards excellence. Likewise, I’m often missing and searching for items like my car keys, phone, and random gloves/hats. So, I instituted a…

Sometimes, residents at the monastery run different personal experiments. Daniel once went a long time without eating any sugary desserts. If anyone saw him about to eat one, we could remind him, and he had to hand it over. One time, Pan went vegan for several months in honor of another vegan friend. Several residents…